Sen. Boxer fires back at Sanders aide: 'He wasn't there'

[cloudythescribbler]

96. Why do HRC & Surrogates continue to complain about NV if they REALLY want to beat Trump?

Many political forces are already coalescing that tend to oddly support the possibility of a Trump victory, which polls show is a VERY serious possibility, perhaps even a probability at this point. Not long ago, staunch Democrats, seeing Trump in the lead, revelled in the possiblity of an HRC landslide in November, helping Democrats in the battle for Congress as well.

First, note how quickly most of the supposed staunch opposition to Trump completely evaporated. It now appears, eg, that Paul Ryan is ready to endorse Trump (it was already framed as a matter of time). I am reminded of the theatric of the party establishment supposedly uniting to stop Jimmy Carter in Penn during the Democratic primary season -- then quickly continued the minuet and united behind the anointed one quickly thereafter. Over the years, we can see that the supposed liberal opposition to Carter in the Democratic establishment -- completey vitiated by the fragmentation of the more progressive grassroots in 76 among four different candidates. This fragmentation pattern was repeated in the GOP primaries in 2016.

Also, note how the mainstream press, which has effectively been an arm of the Trump campaign in this election, combined with mountains of more-sincere-than-sincerity-itself handwringing across the board from journalists, largely doing the job of 'justifying the lying' in any case. Note one example of the MSM pulling their punches with Trump where it might most hurt him -- during the runup to the Iraq War, there was much discussion of jihadist internet chatter, gleeful and gloating about the prospects of the US launching a war against Iraq, knowing that this would clearly help jihadism throughout the region, which indeed it has (including within Iraq). Now surely there MUST be SOME internet chatter from jihadis after more than six months of nonstop coverage of Donald Trump and his xenophobic politics and appeal. And no doubt it wouldn't take too much for the MSM (or others) to dig up this internet chatter (largely not in English, so it requires some special skills to be deployed) seeing to what extent there is similar gloating about the prospect of a Trump presidency, and how this too would drive more of the world's Moslems into the arms of jihadism

Finally, we have the internal politics of the Democratic Party. The knives are already being sharpened to scapegoat & blame Bernie and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party if Hillary loses to Trump. Yet it is precisely the actions and behavior of HRC and her surrogates, including in this scenario of this OP, that would tend to MAXIMIZE the alienation and difficulty of getting close to 100% of Sanders' voters to vote for HRC in the fall in the likely event that she is the nominee, if only to stop Trump. Pushing BS to drop out or to 'tone it down' over the next few weeks, or for his supporters to 'lay off' Bernie, as Reid (the pushover for GOP obstructionism in the Senate 2009-10) recently suggested. Rather than be impatient, the wiser course (which Hillary is at least pretending to follow, even as she won't debate Bernie and doesn't try to restrain her surrogates trashing Bernie and his supporters). Either we would have to see for example those who arranged the NV Convention recently to shut out Bernie supporters from effective participation as total idiots (following Napoleon's precept on the issue) or we would have to conclude that they are either indifferent to or even promoting an agenda of alienating the Sanderistas like myself for the GE in as great numbers as possible. Magnanimity might not pay off handsomely in the near term of the next few months, but the insults and attacks invariably get remembered by many with predictable results

I say all the above as someone who, supporting Bernie from day 1, and before that the idea of him running for president AND AS A DEMOCRAT IN THE PRIMARIES, also agree with his long-stated position that if Hillary is the nominee he will back her. (Trying to push him to commit to this or that at this point may be a media game, but HRC's supporters if strategically smart would completely eschew this type of approach, as it would ONLY help Trump in November

This applies very clearly to Barbara Boxer along with others continuing to snipe at Bernie & his supporters, on the basis of a narrative about NV that turns out to be very dubious in any event. Their priority on keeping the influence of the relatively progressive wing of the Party subdued and in its place, so to speak, is only more likely to help a Trump victory, even if it also helps neoliberals maintain control of the Democratic Party